Department of Energy Secretary Sharon Garin recently said that the thin electricity supply in Visayas will be a “prolonged problem” as the region needs more baseload facilities to complement the growing operations of renewables.
According to Garin, Visayas currently heavily relies on power imports from Luzon and Mindanao, and needs more mid-merit and baseload power plants.
The mid-merit capacities would serve as gap fillers, ready to ramp up supply in case electricity fluctuates throughout the day. Baseload power plants, meanwhile, deliver a steady supply of electricity.
The Energy Secretary said that while Visayas has a high rate of renewable energy facilities such as solar and wind, the amount of electricity they produce is unreliable as it depends on weather conditions.
Unfortunately for the power situation in Visayas, building baseload assets could take three to five years, Garin noted.
The Visayas region has been facing a thin power supply situation, especially for the month of May, when it was placed under a yellow alert status almost every day.
Since the start of the year, 20 yellow alerts and 4 red alerts have been raised over the Visayas.
A yellow alert means the power supply can still meet demand, but it serves as a warning that when a power plant breaks down or goes offline, brownouts will occur. A red alert, meanwhile, means that the supply is no longer sufficient to meet demand, and power interruptions are likely if demand is not managed.
Garin said the government is working on injecting more supply to the Visayas grid.
Visayas may seem like it has enough power plants, but the situation has not improved much because of the variable nature of most renewable energy projects, which means that while there is supply, grid stability remains a problem. Unless battery storage capacity somehow catches up, baseload capacity is still needed to ensure reliability. If it will take 3-5 years to build baseload assets, the DOE and the power sector should have started sooner, rather than the usual later. How much longer do the people of Visayas have to live with seasonal yellow and red alerts that should’ve been preventable through proper planning?*
